TUHS

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6532 discussions

Older Geeks: Guy who invented Unix pipes on recent 'fat finger' problem

by steve jenkin

Doug McIlroy is still around and contributing… With same insight & wry sense of humour :) =========== <https://www.tuhs.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/tuhs@tuhs.org/message/X5P6FYM…> > Apologies for posting the above title tonTUHS. It's not the first time that > I've crossed signals between groff and TUHS, but hey, I've got 10 years on Biden. > > Doug -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

1 year, 4 months

Re: [idea] troff -Troff

by Douglas McIlroy

Apologies for posting the above title tonTUHS. It's not the first time that I've crossed signals between groff and TUHS, but hey, I've got 10 years on Biden. Doug

1 year, 4 months

Census of Early (Pre-C Kernel) UNIX Documents

by segaloco

Hello everyone, I'm currently laying the groundwork for a restart of my mandiff project, expanding it to encompass not just the manual-proper, but also the documents leading to the "Documents for UNIX" collections as well. Thus far I'm about halfway done on a ROFF restoration of the earliest surviving draft of Dennis Ritchie's The UNIX Time-Sharing System paper[1], reconstructed from existing, later NROFF text and ROFF conventions from the Third Edition manual[2]. Thus far, the additional documents I've found explicitly referenced in the earlier days are: User's Reference Manual to B - K. Thompson[3] C Reference Manual - D. M. Ritchie[4 - see note] M6 Manual - A. D. Hall[5] ROFF Manual - J. F. Ossanna[6 - see note] A Manual for the TMG Compiler-writing Language - M. D. McIlroy[7] UNIX Assembler Manual - D. M. Ritchie[8 - see note] NROFF Users' Manual - J. F. Ossanna[9 - see note] YACC Manual - S. C. Johnson[10 - see note] Aside from these references, there are two other B papers, one a tutorial[11] by B. W. Kernighan and the other a MH-TSS reference by S. C. Johnson[12]. I don't think I saw either referenced in the manual-proper. The latter then makes further reference to a "Bell Laboratories BCPL" by R. H. Canaday and D. M. Ritchie, although I suspect this is lost, I can't find it. Anywho, my plan is to take any known ROFF/NROFF sources for the above documents and reconstruct the earliest versions possible and then add them to my revamped repository in the timeframes that they first start showing up as references in the manual to derive a more holistic view of the creation of manuals and guides in the early days. A few matters prompted me to start over: 1. Noticing that there is direct lineage between some of the text in the UnixEditionZero paper and later manual pages like as(I), I want to capture the base text as far back as possible, which in this case would mean ensuring a commit in the chain captures the transfer of the text from the UnixEditionZero paper to as(I) to give a more complete history. 2. Al Kossow has now scanned and preserved a UNIX Program Generic II manual, meaning I no longer have to make as many assumptions about what changed and what didn't in the USG/Research split. Thus far, assumptions about the Program Generic line have been based on the extant MERT manual (which in turn is described as deriving from the Program Generic III manual.) 3. The picture of PWB/2.0 is becoming a bit clearer as time goes on, but is still murky, and that has implications for the changes between the Sixth Edition (where my current mandiff repo[13] ends) and the Seventh Edition. Rather than having to go back and redo a bunch of work, I think the first pass can stand on its own as a source of guidance on redoing this. 4. The cleanliness of the repository history is not to my liking, there are several instances of multiple commits across pages related to some larger, holistic change that would really be easier to study if they were in one. Starting over, I now have a much clearer picture of V1->V6 that I can use to produce a tighter history. Anywho, to summarize what I'm looking for feedback on, first, are there any major documents I'm omitting from this investigation? Any particular technical memoranda that are crucial to the big picture? Additionally, is anyone aware whether USG Program Generic I (or earlier?) had a formal edition of the Programmer's Manual or if they would've just referred folks to the research manual prior to PG II? With the latter question I'm trying to determine if USG manual history starts with the PG II manual Al Kossow has scanned or if I should be considering a hole in the record where a PG I manual goes. Thanks for following along, hopefully getting this groundwork in place will ensure the next go at this project is even more fruitful than the last! - Matt G. --- References --- 1 - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/McIlroy_v0/UnixEditionZ… 2 - https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V3/man 3 - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/kbman.html 4 - I may have a copy of the earliest version of this I can identify. The earliest version I can find online is dated January 15th, 1974 (https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/cman74.pdf) and contains the text "C is also available on the HIS 6070 computer at Murray Hill and on the IBM System/370 at Holmdel" whereas this particular copy of the paper states "C is also available on the HIS 6070 computer at Murray Hill, using a compiler written by A. Snyder and currently maintained by S. C. Johnson. A compiler for the IBM System/360/370 series is under construction." The manual is TROFF printout and isn't formatted as a memorandum like the link included here. References to the C Reference Manual begin to show up as early as the Second Edition manual, although these imply the C manual is still being written. Does anyone know if the C Reference Manual started in ROFF and then moved to NROFF some time before the earliest copies we're aware of? In any case, I intend to scan this copy, it just hasn't bubbled up in my project list yet. 5 - https://tuhs.pdp-11.org.ru/Documentation/TechReports/Bell_Labs/CSTRs/2.pdf 6 - I have a copy that defers from the one I could find here: https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/roff71/roff71.pdf It is not in technical memorandum format and also may be missing a few pages (in mine, the tutorial ends with the "Translation" section but the linked document contains a couple more paragraphs on page offset (.po), merge patterns, and an envoi (conclusion). The most striking difference is that the linked paper is Doug's version for TSS, but the paper I've got lists the invocation in the UNIX style (roff +N -M name1 name2 ...) and is likely representative of the UNIX version with Joe Ossanna's work. Doug if you catch this and believe the attribution on this page (https://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=systems:2nd_edition) should have your by-line or both you and jfo, happy to make the edit. The text of the UNIX version I have does seem to descend from your original paper. By the way, an even earlier version of this paper for runoff is available here (https://manpages.bsd.lv/history/runoff69.low.pdf) 7 - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/1972_stuff/tmg.pdf 8 - This is first referenced in the Third Edition manual. Some of the text may derive from the second Appendix of the "UnixEditionZero" paper linked above, the manpage certainly has influence from that document. Not sure if any of that implies the manual may have started in ROFF, but in any case, constitutes an early reference. 9 - This reference first appears, verifiably, in the Third Edition. However, the Second Edition manual does list nroff(I) in the TOC, but this page is not actually included in the extant PDF in the archive. In any case, the earliest version of the NROFF Users' Manual I'm aware of is the Second Edition, dated 9/11/74. Is any such First Edition extant on the public record? 10 - The earliest reference to this manual I can find is in the Third Edition. Not sure if there are any earlier specimens than the text in the Sixth Edition sources. 11 - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/btut.html 12 - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/bref.html 13 - https://gitlab.com/segaloco/mandiff

1 year, 4 months

Role of Unix in Australian Accounting research: Ball & Brown, founding AGSM

by steve jenkin

Accidentally ran into this today. I’ve never seen this put together and thought it worth adding to the TUHS archives. Hadn’t realised that both the authors of “Ball & Brown” (1968) were Aussies and UNSW alumni. Studying a little accounting, this paper was mentioned as ’the most cited’ paper in the field. The Big New Idea in 1968 was to use computers to analyse stock market data & show correlations. I hadn’t known either had come back to Australia (QLD or WA then UNSW/AGSM), then founded AGSM, with a focus on digital analysis of data. Ian Johnstone, from CSE, went to AGSM to run their computers. He recommended DEC + Unix and was backed by Brown, the director. [ Andy Hume was recruited by Ian J, before leaving for a job at Bell Labs in the Computing Research Centre. ] The AGSM license caused conniptions with the AT&T lawyers. While AGSM fell into the near free “University & Education” license, they weren’t using Unix just for ‘education’. AGSM became the first commercial licensee of Unix, or so I was told at the time. Ian Johnstone was AUUGN editor while at AGSM, before scooting off to the USA and rising to heights there. While Ball & Brown studied in Faculty of Commerce, they obviously had enough of a grounding in ‘computing’ and data collection / handling / analysis to set the stage for their 1968 paper. In 1971, Fortran IV was taught to first year students in Science, using John M Blatt’s (of UNSW) textbook. It’s not unreasonable that Finance & Accounting had courses or training in Computing 5 years before that. Within 10 years, they were both back at UNSW, running AGSM, teaching & using Digital research methods, based solidly on Unix… cheers steve =============== <https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm/editorials/0206edit.html> Looking back, I realise it must have been a fortuitous convergence for me: thanks to Philip Brown and Ian Johnstone, the AGSM had been running Unix machines since 1976; thanks to Bob Wood, I read of Bob Axelrod's work with GAs in examining the Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma before it was published (and Axelrod was also at Michigan); thanks to my innate curiosity, I had been reading and contributing to the Usenet news groups on the Internet since 1986. Sydney was not so far from Ann Arbor, finally. =============== Phillip Brown <https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/accounting/caip/aahof/ceremonies/philip_brown> Philip Brown holds an important and unique place within the annals of Australian accounting. As co-author of the research paper that redefined the course of academic accounting research in the last forty years he inadvertently set the research agendas and directions for a legion of academics that followed. Philip started school at Riverstone in western Sydney with a short stint at Summer Hill in his final two years of primary education proceeding to Canterbury Boys High School where he scored an average pass in his Leaving Certificate. He then worked as a junior clerk in the accounting department of British Motor Corporation at Zetland. Advised to seek tertiary qualifications he thought he should enrol for a commerce degree at the University of NSW. Despite this advice, Philip enrolled as a part-time student in the Faculty of Commerce at University of New South Wales gaining the highest pass in the course. This level of achievement was maintained throughout his degree leading inevitably to an honours year, graduating with First Class Honours and taking a University Medal. After graduation Philip tutored at University of New South Wales, received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the USA heading to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He completed his MBA in 1963 finishing top of the class During this period [2 years after MBS] he met Ray Ball with whom he wrote a seminal paper that defined the course of accounting research for the next forty years. Rather than pursue a career in the United States, Philip returned to Australia as a Reader in Accounting at the University of Western Australia (July, 1968 – June, 1970). In 1974, Philip moved to Sydney to help establish the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM). As inaugural Foundation Director he introduced world-class MBA and MPA (public administration) programs to develop the skills of Australia's future leaders. During his AGSM days Philip championed the development of Australian data in financial accounting research. He saw the need for Australian share price data to be systematically collected and made available to researchers spending a great deal of time personally collecting data and providing programming support for these databases. The existence of these databases as a high quality resource for researchers is often taken for granted today but it was the foresight scholars with foresight like Philip who saw the need and acted accordingly. =============== Ray Ball <https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/accounting/caip/aahof/ceremonies/ray-ball> Raymond John Ball is one of the most influential contemporary accounting scholars, having held professorial positions in Australia at UNSW and Queensland, and in the United States at Rochester and Chicago. With a first-class honours degree and the University Medal from UNSW, Ray moved to the University of Chicago where he earned an MBA and PhD. In 1968 Ray Ball co-authored the seminal paper ‘An Empirical Evaluation of Accounting Income Numbers’ that revolutionised financial accounting research. Drawing on the developing financial economics literature and linking accounting information and share prices in a novel manner, the paper provided the foundation for modern capital markets-based research. As the inaugural recipient of the American Accounting Association’s Seminal Contributions to the Accounting Literature Award in 1986 it was observed that ‘no other paper … has played so important a role in the development of accounting research during the past thirty years’. It remains the most highly cited accounting research paper. Ray Ball has also had a major influence on accounting education in Australia, h aving been Professor of Accounting at the University of Queensland (1972-1976), and foundation professor at the Australian Graduate School of Management (UNSW) (1976-1986), where he was instrumental in the development of the first US-style PhD program in Accounting and Finance in Australia. During his time at Queensland and UNSW he was instrumental in developing rigorous empirical research in Australian capital markets, addressing issues such as the risk/return trade-off, dividend policy and taxation mechanisms. =============== -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

1 year, 4 months

Original print of V7 manual?

by Mychaela Falconia

Hello fellow lovers of old UNIX, Would anyone happen to have a raster scan (not OCR) of the original printing of UNIX Programmer's Manual, 7th edition? Does such a thing exist? Given that Brian S. Walden produced and published a PDF reprint of this manual (presumably done with some "modern" version of troff) back in 1998, I reason that there probably wasn't much interest in preserving the original print by painstaking scanning (and the files from such a scan would have been ginormous by 1998 standards), hence I am not certain if such a scanned version exists - but I thought I would ask nonetheless. I was however very pleased to discover that some very kind soul named Erica Fischer did scan and upload the complete set of Usenix printed books for 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD - here is the 4.2BSD version: https://archive.org/details/uum-ref-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/uum-supplement-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-ref-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-supplement-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/smm-4.2bsd and here is 4.3BSD: https://archive.org/details/uum-ref-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/uum-supplement-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-ref-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-sup1-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-sup2-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/smm-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/uum-index-4.3bsd It is my understanding that all supplementary docs (the papers that were originally in volumes 2a and 2b in the V7 manual) were retroffed by UCB/Usenix for 4.3BSD edition, but the earlier 4.2BSD Usenix print seems to be different - it looks like for 4.2BSD they only did a new troff run for all man pages and for new (Berkeley-added) supplementary docs, but in the case of docs which originally appeared in V7 vol 2, it appears that Usenix did some kind of analogue mass reproduction from a historical V7 master, *without* doing a new troff run on those docs. *If* this hypothesis is correct, then Erica's uploaded scan of 4.2BSD manuals can serve as a practical substitute for the presumably- missing scan of the original printing of V7 manual - but I would like to double-check my hypothesis with others who are presumably more knowledgeable about this ancient history (some of you actually lived through that history, unlike me!), hence the reason for this post. I would appreciate either confirmation or correction of the guesses and conjectures I expressed above. M~

1 year, 4 months

32V filesystem images to verify code against.

by Jacob Moody

Hello TUHS, I recently have been working on the Plan 9 fs/v6fs and fs/v32fs programs, another member of the community had noticed bugs within them and I wanted to verify that the new code is working as expected. I haven't had an issue verifying v6fs using files from the TUHS archive but v32fs has proved to be a bit more tricky. After a little bit of work we were able to get the 'file2' located at https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/USDL/32V/ to mount and read files. But given that all the files here are binaries it was a bit hard to make sure we're getting the correct information. I attempted to cross reference the files I get against the file2.tar also located within that spot in the archive but I am getting tar errors when extracting this file, so its not exactly obvious if what I am checking against is correct. So I would like to ask if someone here knows exactly what the sha1sums of these files are supposed to be and/or has another image with known contents I could test against. I will preface this with the fact that I am not very well versed in old UNIX filesystems so please let me know if I've missed anything. Thank you, Jacob Moody

1 year, 4 months

Unix System V on the Public Domain 32000 (NS32016 chip set) reproduction

by Andrew Lynch

Hi I am interested in reconstructing the Public Domain 32000 (PD32) which appeared in 1986 edition of MicroCornicopia. It claimed to run Unix System V on a PC 8-bit ISA board using the NS32016 chip set. Does anyone remember this system and/or have any interest in it? Here is a link from Hackaday more fully describing the effort: ISA bus slave NS32016 processor board | Hackaday.io Thanks, Andrew Lynch

1 year, 4 months

Re: Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Ruizendaal >> the ambiguous phrase "had the first implementation of FTP", which >> has been flagged as needing clarification > From RFC 354 ... and from RFC 414 Those are NCP FTP, a slightly different protocol, and implementation, from TCP FTP. (The code from the NCP one was sometimes recycled into the TCP one; see e.g.: https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/sysnet/ftpu.161 which has both in one program.) These RFC's you listed are obviously pre-TCP; the first TCP RFC is RFC-675. (The first RFC that even mentions TCP seems to be RFC-661.) RFC's are all NCP-related until around #700 or so, when the mix starts to change. Maybe the "needing clarification" refers to these two different FTP's? Without an explicit classifier, does that text refer to NCP FTP or TCP FTP? Noel

1 year, 5 months

Re: Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Bakul Shah > He was part of NSFNet, so could have got first FTP on NSFnet or a > later version of FTP. You all are talking about _two separate FTP's_ (as I pointed out previously). If you all would stop confusing yourselves, you'd be able to sort out the bogons. In this particular case, the NSFnet appeared at a _much_ later stage of the growth of the Internet (yes, it is spelled with a capital 'I'; the morons at the AP were not aware that 'internet' was a pre-existing word with a _different meaning_) than when Dave was working with the Fuzzball, and by that point there were _many_ TCP FTP's (e.g. the ITS one I previously sent the URL to the source for), so the 'first FTP on NSFnet' is a non-concept. The best bet for accurate data is to look at the TCP meeting minutes from the IEN series: https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien-index.html Looking quickly, the first one that Dave appears in might be IEN-160, "Internet Meeting Notes -- 7-8-9 October 1980". (He wasn't in the "Attendees" lists of any of the earlier ones I looked at.) Look in the "Status Reports" sections to see if he says anything about where he's at. The one for this one says: "Dave described the configuration of equipment at COMSAT which consists of a number of small hosts, mainly LSI-11s. ... COMSAT has also used NIFTP to transmit files between their hosts and ISIE. The NIFTP software was provided by UCL. ... COMSAT plans to .. arrange a permanent connection to the ARPANET." I have no idea what a "NIFTP" might be. Also, there is a reason that serious historians prefer contemporary written records, not people's memories. Noel

1 year, 5 months

Re: Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by Paul Ruizendaal

> I see that the wording on his Wikipedia page has the ambiguous phrase "had > the first implementation of FTP", which has been flagged as needing > clarification, so I intend to provide it. > > In both this interview: > > https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/113899/oh403dlm.pdf > > ... and this video recording of Mills himself giving a lecture at UDel: > > https://youtu.be/08jBmCvxkv4?t=428 > > ... it's quite clear that it's literally true - he authored, compiled, > installed, implemented, and tested the very first (and apparently second) > FTP server. It may be impossible to provide hard evidence. From RFC 354 it seems to me that the protocol took on a recognisable shape around July 1972 and from RFC 414 it seems to me that there were a number of implementations by November 1972, and unfortunately Dave Mills is not mentioned. His recollection may well be correct, but finding proof he was the first in a 4 months time slot 50+ years ago may be too ambitious. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc354.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc414.txt Maybe the internet history list can shed some more light on the matter: https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history

1 year, 5 months

(Off topic) Dave Mills

by George Michaelson

Dave Mills, of fuzzball and ntp fame, one time U Delaware died on the 17th of January. He was an interesting, entertaining, prolific and rather idosyncratic emailer. Witty and informative. G

1 year, 5 months

Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by Royce Williams

What is the best public, unambiguous, non-YouTube reference I can cite for the late David Mills' initial FTP work? I see that the wording on his Wikipedia page has the ambiguous phrase "had the first implementation of FTP", which has been flagged as needing clarification, so I intend to provide it. In both this interview: https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/113899/oh403dlm.pdf ... and this video recording of Mills himself giving a lecture at UDel: https://youtu.be/08jBmCvxkv4?t=428 ... it's quite clear that it's literally true - he authored, compiled, installed, implemented, and tested the very first (and apparently second) FTP server. But Wikipedia's guidelines discourage YouTube-only citations, and the text in the interview seems insufficiently detailed to have citation value. What is the best reference I can cite? Thanks! -- Royce

1 year, 5 months

Re: Original print of V7 manual? / My own version of troff

by G. Branden Robinson

Hi Lennart, At 2024-01-18T15:45:55+0000, Lennart Jablonka wrote: > Quoth John Gardner: > > Thanks for reminding me, Branden. :) I've yet to get V7 Unix working with > > the latest release of SimH, so that's kind of stalled my ability to develop > > something in K&R-friendly C. > > I went ahead and write a little C/A/T-to-later-troff-output converter in > v7-friendly and C89-conforming C: > > https://git.sr.ht/~humm/catdit This is an exciting prospect but I can't actually see anything there. I get an error. "401 Unauthorized You don't have the necessary permissions to access this page. Index" > I’m not confident in having got the details of spacing right (Is that > 55-unit offset when switching font sizes correct?) I've never heard of this C/A/T feature/wart before. Huh. > and the character codes emitted are still those of the C/A/T, > resulting in the wrong glyphs being used. The codes should probably be remapped by default, with a command-line option to restore the original ones. I would of course recommend writing out 'C' commands with groff special character names. > I created the attached document like this: > > v7$ troff -t /usr/man/man0/title >title.cat > host$ catdit <title.cat | dpost -F. -Tcat >title.ps > > (Where do the two blank pages at the end come from?) Good question; we may need to rouse a C/A/T expert. > PS: Branden, for rougher results, if you happen to have a Tektronix > 4014 at hand (like the one emulated by XTerm), you can use that to > look at v7 troff’s output. Tell your SIMH to pass control bytes > through and run troff -t | tc. I'd love to, just please make your repo available to the public. :) Regards, Branden

1 year, 5 months

Re: Original print of V7 manual? / My own version of troff

by Mychaela Falconia

John Gardner wrote: > I'm a professional graphic designer with access to commercial typeface > authoring software. Send me the highest-quality and most comprehensive > scans of a C/A/T-printed document, and I'll get to work. Are you offering to donate your labor in terms of typeface design, or will it be a type of deal where the community will need to collectively pitch in money to cover the cost of you doing it professionally? In either case, the "C/A/T-printed document" of most value to this project would be the same one G. Branden Robinson is referring to: > If you don't have my scan of CSTR #54 (1976), which helpfully dumps all > of the glyphs in the faces used by the Bell Labs CSRC C/A/T-4, let me > know and I'll send it along. I won't vouch for its high quality but it > should be comprehensive with respect to coverage. The paper in question is Nroff/Troff User's Manual by Joseph F. Ossanna, dated 1976-10-11, which was indeed also CSTR #54. The document is 33 pages long in its original form, and page 31 out of the 33 is the most interesting one for the purpose of font recreation: it is the page that exhibits all 4 fonts of 102 characters each. Here are the few published scans I am aware of: 1) Page 245 of: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/UNIX_Programmers_Manual_Seven… 2) Page 235 of: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/UNIX_Programmers_Manual_Seven… 3) Page 239 of: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/VA-004A_UNIX_Programmers_Manu… 4) Page 499 of: https://archive.org/details/uum-supplement-4.2bsd Question to Branden: the scan you are referring to as "my scan", how does it compare to the 4 I just linked above? If your scan has better quality than all 4 versions I linked above, can you please make it public? M~

1 year, 5 months

Re: PCS kernel sources

by Paul Ruizendaal

> All, I got this e-mail from Holger a while back. Somehow it went into > a folder and has lurked unseen for way too long. > > Does anybody know any more about PCS Unix and, if so, where should > I place the code that Holger has donated into the Unix Archive? I don’t know much about PCS Unix, but I did come across many references to Newcastle Connection (and Unix United) when researching early networking and the various approaches to giving early Unix a networking API. I think there is no other set of surviving sources for this. Maybe Holger disagrees, but I would say that PCS Unix is best placed in the “Early networking” section. By the way, for those interested, here is a start to read up on Unix United: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_Connection To some extent, it is similar to the “RIDE” software developed at Bell Labs Naperville by Priscilla Lu and to S/F Unix developed by GWR Luderer at Murray Hill. As far as I know the sources for both of those have been lost to time, afaik.

1 year, 5 months

Re: Original print of V7 manual? / My own version of troff

by Mychaela Falconia

Hi again John, > I only meant "professional" insofar as aptitude with graphics is concerned. > I won't accept money; I'm offering my labour out of love for typography, > computer history and its preservation, and of course, the technology that > got Unix the funding it needed to revolutionise computing. In any case, > there's no actual "design" work involved: it's literally just tracing > existing shapes to recreate an existing design. I do stuff like this > <https://github.com/file-icons/icons#why-request-an-icon-cant-i-submit-a-pr> > for *fun*, for crying out loud. Sounds great! If you are indeed serious about trying to recreate the ancient C/A/T character set in PostScript fonts (or some other font format that can be converted into a form that can be downloaded into a genuine PostScript printer), I'll try to find some time to produce the following: 1) A set of C/A/T binary files corresponding to that CSTR #54 manual, as well as BWK's troff tutorial which usually follows right after in book compilations. This step is simply a matter of running the original troff executable (with -t option) on the original source files for these docs - but since I actually run an OS that still includes that original version of troff and you said you don't, it would probably be easier for me to produce and publish these files. 2) A converter tool from C/A/T binary codes to PostScript, using whatever fonts you give it. I'll test it initially using the set of fonts which I developed for my 4.3BSD-Quasijarus pstroff - all characters will be there, all positioning will come from original troff, but it won't look pretty because most PS native font characters don't match those of C/A/T. Then as you progress with your font drawing project, you should be able to substitute your fonts instead of mine, and see how the output improves. > Nice! The more material I have, the merrier. As for the scan that Branden > and I were referring to, I've uploaded a copy to Dropbox Using pdfimages utility with -list option, I compared the image format and resolution in various scans I described in my previous mail, plus this new one you just shared, and concluded that the best quality is contained in these two: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/UNIX_Programmers_Manual_Seven… http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/VA-004A_UNIX_Programmers_Manu… Here are extracted PNG images of just the relevant page from both PDFs: https://www.freecalypso.org/members/falcon/troff/cstr54-fontpage-sri.png https://www.freecalypso.org/members/falcon/troff/cstr54-fontpage-ucb.png Each PNG is a lossless extract from the corresponding PDF, made with pdfimages utility. Each image is described as being 600x600 DPI in PDF metadata, and the print is said to be in 12 point - numbers for converting from pixels to .001m units in font reconstruction... M~

1 year, 5 months

Re: Original print of V7 manual? / My own version of troff

by G. Branden Robinson

Hi John, At 2024-01-18T00:43:41+1100, John Gardner wrote: > I'm a professional graphic designer with access to commercial typeface > authoring software. Send me the highest-quality and most comprehensive > scans of a C/A/T-printed document, and I'll get to work. If you don't have my scan of CSTR #54 (1976), which helpfully dumps all of the glyphs in the faces used by the Bell Labs CSRC C/A/T-4, let me know and I'll send it along. I won't vouch for its high quality but it should be comprehensive with respect to coverage. > Thanks for reminding me, Branden. :) I've yet to get V7 Unix working > with the latest release of SimH, Let me know in private mail where you got stuck. Maybe I can help. > I'm still up for this, assuming you've not already started. No, I haven't--perhaps because I am an Ada fanboy, the prospect of coding in pre-standard C and its mission to turn anything that can be lexically analyzed into _some_ sequence of machine instructions has not stoked my excitement. (Which isn't to say that one _can't_ write safe code using K&R C; my fear is that having to remember all of the things the compiler won't do for you would overwhelm the task at hand. Too bad Unix V7 didn't have Perl, since this is basically a text transformation problem.) Regards, Branden

1 year, 5 months

PCS kernel sources

by Warren Toomey

All, I got this e-mail from Holger a while back. Somehow it went into a folder and has lurked unseen for way too long. Does anybody know any more about PCS Unix and, if so, where should I place the code that Holger has donated into the Unix Archive? Many thanks, Warren ----- Forwarded message from hveit01(a)web.de ----- From: hveit01(a)web.de To: wkt(a)tuhs.org Subject: PCS kernel sources Hi Warren, Some time ago I subscribed to the tuhs mailing list because of my interests in Unix. I have been working on regenerating the ancient PCS unix (see more details in the README file in the attached archive). Now it is in a state to publish the results. You may decide to put this up on the TUHS website for reference. PCS UNIX (dubbed MINUX) is special in the way that it is derived from an SVR3.2 UNIX with the Newcastle connection integrated. The Newcastle connection is an early attempt for multicomputer networking; it provides a shared file system over the network, similar to the later NFS. To my knowledge, it is the first time that source for it are described (beyond some publicly availablereasearch paper); I haven't yet managed to find the original sources of this. Regards Holger Veit ----- End forwarded message -----

1 year, 5 months

Original print of V7 manual? / My own version of troff

by tuhs＠cuzuco.com

No idea what COFF is, but in the early 1980s, two non-troff options on the software side were - 1) TeX. From Donald Knuth, which means tau epsilon chi, pronounced tech not tex. The urban legend was upon seeing an inital copy of one of his books sometime in the 1970s, he yelled "blech!" and decided that if you wanted your documents to look right, you need to do be able to it yourself, and TeX rhymes with blech. 2) Scribe. From Brian Reid, of Carnegie-Mellon See http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/scribe.pdf -Brian Clem Cole clemc at ccc.com wrtoe: > Not really UNIX -- so I'm BCC TUHS and moving to COFF > > On Tue, Jan 9, 2024 at 12:19b/PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote: > > > On the subject of troff origins, in a world where troff didn't exist, and > > one purchases a C/A/T, what was the general approach to actually using the > > thing? Was there some sort of datasheet the vendor supplied that the end > > user would have to program a driver around, or was there any sort of > > example code or other materials provided to give folks a leg up on using > > their new, expensive instrument? Did they have any "packaged bundles" for > > users of prominent systems such as 360/370 OSs or say one of the DEC OSs? > > > Basically, the phototypesetter part was turnkey with a built-in > minicomputer with a paper tape unit, later a micro and a floppy disk as a > cost reduction. The preparation for the typesetter was often done > independently, but often the vendor offered some system to prepare the PPT > or Floppy. Different typesetter vendors targeted different parts of the > market, from small local independent newspapers (such as the one my sister > and her husband owned and ran in North Andover MA for many years), to > systems that Globe or the Times might. Similarly, books and magazines > might have different systems (IIRC the APS-5 was originally targeted for > large book publishers). This was all referred to as the 'pre-press' > industry and there were lots of players in different parts. > > Large firms that produced documentation, such as DEC, AT&T *et al*., and > even some universities, might own their own gear, or they might send it out > to be set. > > The software varied greatly, depending on the target customer. For > instance, by the early 80s, the Boston Globe's input system was still > terrible - even though the computers had gotten better. I had a couple of > friends working there, and they used to b*tch about it. But big newspapers > (and I expect many other large publishers) were often heavy union shops on > the back end (layout and presses), so the editors just wanted to set strips > of "column wide" text as the layout was manual. I've forgotten the name of > the vendor of the typesetter they used, but it was one of the larger firms > -- IIRC, it had a DG Nova in it. My sister used CompuGraphic Gear, which > was based on 8085's. She had two custom editing stations and the > typesetter itself (it sucked). The whole system was under $35K in > late-1970s money - but targeted to small newspapers like hers. In the > mid-1908s, I got her a Masscomp at a reduced price and put 6 Wyse-75 > terminals on it, so she could have her folks edit their stories with vi, > run spell, and some of the other UNIX tools. I then reverse-engineered the > floppy enough to split out the format she wanted for her stories -- she > used a manual layout scheme. She still has to use the custom stuff for > headlines and some other parts, but it was a load faster and more parallel > (for instance, we wrote an awk script to generate the School Lunch menus, > which they published each week). >

1 year, 5 months

V10 monk program

by arnold＠skeeve.com

Hi All. V10 had a program called "monk" which was a "document compiler". It produced troff and know how to run eqn, tbl, and pic and I'm guessing also refer. It seems to have been inspired by Scribe. The V10 files from Dan Cross have the device independent troff output for the paper that describes monk. G. Branden Robinson was kind enough to turn it into PostScript for me; his story is below, forwarded by permission. I'm also attaching the PostScript file. I'm curious, did this see a lot of use inside Research or outside of it? At first glance, it looks like the kind of thing that might have caught on, especially for people who weren't already used to troff. Thanks, Arnold > Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2024 12:25:53 -0600 > From: "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson(a)gmail.com> > To: Aharon Robbins <arnold(a)skeeve.com> > Subject: Re: v10 ditroff output file > > Hi Arnold, > > At 2024-01-09T08:50:28+0200, Aharon Robbins wrote: > > Hi. > > > > The file of interest is attached. It's from vol2/monk in Dan Cross's > > V10 sources in the Distributions/Research directory from TUHS. > > > > If you can get postscript out of it somehow, > > Bad news and good news. > > ...unfortunately there was too much impedance mismatch with groff/grops. > > Some font names differ but that's not a big deal. (Also, today I > learned: the troff that generated this reloaded all the fonts at each > new page.) The troff(1) that generated this also attempted vertical > motion before starting the first page. That also wasn't a big deal. I > thought I was going to be able to text-edit my way to a solution...but > then... > > grops really wants the device resolution to be 72,000 dpi, not 720, and > we'd have to write a rescaling feature to support that. Just editing > the output file won't do because the file uses Kernighan's optimized, > anonymous output command pervasively. > > groff_out(5): > ddc Move right dd (exactly two decimal digits) basic units u, > then print glyph with single‐letter name c. > > In groff, arbitrary syntactical space around and within this > command is allowed to be added. Only when a preceding > command on the same line ends with an argument of variable > length a separating space is obligatory. In classical > troff, large clusters of these and other commands were used, > mostly without spaces; this made such output almost > unreadable. > > So all these two-digit motions would need to become five-digit motions > or all the glyphs would pile up on each other. (And that's exactly what > I happened after doing a couple of fixups and throwing gxditview(1) at > it.) > > Out of curiosity, I tried DWB 3.3 troff. > > It did well, until the fourth page, when it fell over and produced > PostScript that made Ghostscript very angry. > > So I tried Heirloom Doctools troff. > > 20 pages of goodness. > > But be advised: some sort of extension was used to embed other > PostScript files: > > ./bin/dpost: can't open picture file samples/tailor.ps (line 1493) (page 2) > ./bin/dpost: can't open picture file samples/memo.ps (line 1749) (page 3) > ./bin/dpost: can't open picture file samples/tmbody.ps (line 2151) (page 4) > ./bin/dpost: can't open picture file samples/tmcs.ps (line 2694) (page 5) > > So I went to minnie.tuhs.org to see if they were there... > > ...and they were. > > So here you go. Renders without errors (though Heirloom is nowhere near > as validation-happy as groff), and the output seems plausible. > > > I'll really appreciate it. :-) > > Enjoy! > > Regards, > Branden

1 year, 5 months

Re: Original print of V7 manual?

by Douglas McIlroy

> The <C>omputerphile Youtube channel did a video about 10 years ago about > "The Great 202 jailbreak:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVxeuwlvf8w It may be superfluous in this forum, but one should note that the video's characterization of Brian Kernighan as the father of typesetting at Bell Labs does great disservice to Joe Ossanna, who single-handedly brought the first phototypesetter to the labs, subjected it to computer control, and wrote troff (which lives on 50 years later) to drive it. In passing, the video denigrates the C/A/T because it had a fixed font repertoire and no general graphic capability. But without the antecedent of C/A/T and troff, the famous Linotron summer-vacation project would never have been undertaken. Doug

1 year, 5 months

XID register

by ron minnich

SunRPC, among other protocols, needs transaction IDs (XIDs) to distinguish RPCs.For SunRPC, it's important that XIDs not be reused (not for all protocols; 9p has no such requirement). Stateless protocols like NFS and reused XIDs can get messy. There is a vague, 30 year old memory, I have, that at some point SPARC got a time register, or some other register, that always provided a different answer each time it was read, even if read back to back, in part to enable creation of non-reused XIDs. Note that things like the TSC or RISC-V MTIME register make no such guarantee. I am pretty sure someone here can fill me in, or tell me I'm wrong, about my SPARC memory. thanks

1 year, 5 months

Re: Original print of V7 manual?

by Brian Walden

Mychaela Falconia falcon at freecalypso.org wrote: . . . > > It was made under Solaris 2.6, on an Ultra 2 ("Pulsar"), using the troff, tbl, > > eqn, pic, refer and macros as supplied by Sun at that time, and NOT any GNU > > ones. Why? These were the versions written by AT&T that Sun got directly from > > them during their SVR4 collaboration. I used the PostScript output option to > > troff (which obviously did not exist in 1979). > > You did the right thing: the version you used certainly feels much more > "right" than anything from GNU. I was just tryting to use the tool that would give the path of least resistance for that troff source. Even between flavors of UNIX in the 1980s, there were issues getting correctly formatted output bewteen Documenter's Workbench (DWB) and UCB. > > That code to produce PostScript > > outout, had a high probability of being written by the graphics group run by > > Nils-Peter Nelson in Russ Archer's Murray Hill Computer Center (department > > 45268). > > So it is a different ditroff-to-PS chain than psdit from Adobe > Transcript? I am not too familiar with the latter, as I ended up > writing my own troff (derived from V7 version, just published) that > emits PS directly, but it is my understanding that Back In The Day > most people used psdit for this type of workflow. The DWB way of troff to PostScript is -- $ pic file | tbl | eqn | troff -mm -Tpost | dpost >file.ps $ # if you want to print it near the "bird cage" printer, near a famous stair case in MH $ i10send -dbirdie -lpost file.ps $ # which would eventually call postio for you $ postio -l /dev/tty?? file.ps As this is pre-ethernet time, QMS printers are connected via RS-232 serial lines and postio does the communication to the printer. You can find dpost at https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=OpenSolaris_b135/cmd/lp/filter/p… (or at https://github.com/n-t-roff/DWB3.3/blob/master/postscript/dpost/dpost.c ) Looking at the last few lines of https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=OpenSolaris_b135/cmd/lp/filter/p… it is signed, Richard Drechsler MH 2F-241 x7442 mhuxa!drexler Which is that group I mentioned. Rich wrote dpost for sure, also if you look at the last person thanked in the Preface of The C programming Language, Second Edition (1988) -- Rich Drechsler helped greatly with typesetting. On a sad side note, Carmela L'Hommedieu, I was going to say "recently," but it's been almost four years now, who also worked in that group, has passed https://www.tributearchive.com/obituaries/10822663/Carmela-Scrocca-LHommedi… > > > I did have a volume 2A that also had the correct 7th Edition C Reference > > Manual > > in it. The one you get in my 1988 PDF is from the 6th Edition, notice it is > > the old =+ syntax and not the += one. Dennis said that not even Lucent could > > provide that as a free PDF, as it was a published book by Prentice-Hall. I > > was asked to destroy all PDFs that had that version in it. > > Ouch, until you pointed it out in this ML post, I hadn't even noticed > that the C Reference Manual doc is "wrong" in your PDF version! But > here comes the really important question: if you once had a PDF reprint > with the "right" version of this doc, where did you get the troff > source for it? This is the source that was actually censored from the > V7 tape: > > https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/doc/cman Yes that is the missing C Reference Manual. I was gifted the troff source for it, and unfortunately I do not have that gifted copy anymore. > > I don't have this problem for my 4.3BSD reprint: the source for 4.3BSD > version of this doc is included on the tape; the corresponding SCCS > log begins with "document received from AT&T", checked in on 86/05/14, > and then revised by BSD people into what they wanted printed in their > version of the manual. But if someone wishes to do a *proper* reprint > of the V7 manual (or 4.2BSD, where this doc and many others were > literally unchanged duplications from V7 master at the plate level), > we need the troff source for the V7 version of this doc. > > If this source is totally lost, we as in community can probably do an > OCR from a surviving scan (for example, the one in 4.2BSD PSD book) > and then painstakingly produce a new troff source that would format > into an exact replica - but if there is a leaked copy of the original > source somewhere, it would certainly make our job way easier. > > > Larry McVoy asked me for my modified files to make the PDFs too, in 1999 or > > 2000, for bitkeeper or bitsavers. But since I was not allowed to share them > > and I had moved companies, I had lost them. I thought I had saved a copy but > > I could no longer find it. I asked Dennis if he still had them, he did not. > > This work is truly lost. > > Aside from the unresolved issue of "cman" document, we as in community > can produce an even better work if we so wish. I am deferring a more > detailed discussion until I put out my 4.3BSD PS reprint, so I can > point to it as a reference for how I like to do things, and maybe by > then we'll have some clarity on what happened to V7 "cman" troff source. You will need to check on the legality of that. It is missing because it was published as Appendix A of the first edition of The C Programming Language in 1978 by Prentice-Hall, which means they (not Bell Labs, nor successor compaies, AT&T, Lucent, Alcatel, Nokia) contractually own the rights to it for some period of time. I you read Dennis' old home page at https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/ you'll see this verbage -- "The version of the C Reference Manual Postscript (250KB) or PDF, (79K) that came with 6th Edition Unix (May 1975), in the second volume entitled ``Documents for Use With the Unix Time-sharing System''. For completeness, there are also versions of Kernighan's tutorial on C, in Postscript or PDF format. There is also a slightly earlier (January 1974) version of the C manual, in the form of an uninterpreted PDF scan of a Bell Labs Technical Memorandum, visible here, if you can accommodate 1.9MB. No updated version of this manual was distributed with most machine readable versions of the 7th Edition, since the first edition of the `white book' K&R was published about the same time. The tutorial was greatly expanded into the bulk of the book, and the manual became the book's Appendix A. However, it turns out that the paper copies of the 7th Edition manual that we printed locally include not only what became Appendix A of K&R 1, but also a page entitled "Recent Changes to C", and I retyped this. I haven't been able to track down the contemporary machine-readable version (it's possible that some tapes were produced that included it). This is available in PostScript or PDF format." As we know from the recent public domaining of Mickey Mouse, copyright is retained 70 years past the date of death of the (last surviving) author. So if Brian Kernighan lives to the ripe old age of 101, this work cannot be used without permisson until 2113, unless the rights holders place it into the public domian before hand. Since the 1st edition is out of print, it's rights *may* have reverted back, but to which companies? Probabaly Nokia and AT&T jointy. But there is no way to know if you can use it, without an official notice of such. -Brian

1 year, 5 months

Re: Original print of V7 manual?

by Brian Walden

Arnold, Thank you, it's nice to have one's work appreciated. And I know, you were doing exactly what I was doing, trying to make it more accessible to more people. And Dennis, being who he was, always gave credit where credit was do. There's nothing else he could or would have done. And like I said, it was long ago and has not bothered me in a very long time. Thanks for your continued dedication to gawk. Awk still just flows out of my fingers without even needing to think much or at all. Professionally, I have programmed in python for years, and have never gotten to the same level intimacy I have with awk. -Brian arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > Thanks for this history Brian. > > It was a long time ago, but I think all I did was figure out how > to turn the PDF back into postscript, since I had a postscript printer > at the time and it was easier for me to print postscript. > > I sent the files to Dennis _only_ with the thought that they might be > useful to other people, and certainly with no intent to steal any credit. > > Your files were great; I printed out hardcopy at the time and > still have them on a shelf in my basement. > > Thanks! > > Arnold

1 year, 5 months

SunOS 4.1.3 and 4.1.4 Release Manuals

by Kevin Bowling

Would anyone happen to have a link to these? I am curious to read the changes in the final SunOS 4.1 versions and see how it yielded to Solaris during that period. Here is the 4.1.2 version for reference https://vtda.org/docs/computing/Sun/software/800-6645-10_SunOS4.1.2ReleaseM…. Regards, Kevin

1 year, 6 months

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